Apple announced the Best of Mac App Store 2011 yesterday, and it’s a great list of some of the most outstanding apps available for OS X. Pixelmator won app of the year and Civilization V is named Game of the Year:

We listened to your feature requests and outfitted Posterino 2.5 with a very special calendar feature. Use it to design gorgeous personalized calendars to hang in your home and give out as presents. We think Posterino 2.5 will come in very handy this holiday season, especially when you need last minute gift ideas.

Get creative with easy custom calendars

We have a bunch of new templates offering calendar formats that can be customized in various ways. It’s very easy to tweak the calendar formats to suit your needs. Or you can create your own documents or templates featuring a custom calendar:

Some new templates featuring our new calendar object

Download and design away

Instantly download the demo to give it a try:

Click to download Posterino 2.5 demo

Also available in the Mac App Store:

Click to visit Posterino on Mac App Store

Please note, you need at least an Intel Mac and OS X 10.6 or later to cook up your new designs.

And don’t miss the sale!

Posterino 2.5 is a free update for all owners of a Posterino 2 license!

If you not yet own Posterino 2, you might like to know that to celebrate our new milestone, Posterino will go on sale for 19.99 USD. This special price is only available through Sunday, December 11th. Consider it our extended Cyber Monday promotion, in case you didn’t find something outstanding on Black Friday. ;)

Warm wishes to you and yours for a wonderful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year.

Mac App Store does not allow the distribution of beta software, which is actually a good thing. However, from time to time you might like to run a beta version. For example, we just implemented a “Snap to Guides” feature and made it available as a beta several weeks before the feature actually appeared on the Mac App Store version of Posterino.

In this article I would like to talk about two things:

How to run a Posterino beta version side by side with a copy of Posterino purchased through the Mac App Store.

How to sign up for our beta version e-mail notification service.

Why would you like to run beta software?

Lets talk about why you would like to run beta software in the first place. The reasons are numerous:

The Mac App Store review process takes some time and you might like to get your hands on the most current version of Posterino as soon as possible.

We implemented a new feature which you (among others) requested and we like to give you the chance to be the first to play with it, like the “Snap to Guides” feature that was requested by many of you. Generally on these occasions we send out invites with a link to a beta version.

A beta version fixes a problem you’ve encountered, but this version of Posterino is not yet available on the Mac App Store.

You’d simply like to stay on top of the development.

You just need the pure thrill of running beta software. In this case, please also contact the local branch of the Beta Addicts Anonymous support group.

Install beta software

First, one word of caution: Some folks really like to get their hands on the latest “bleeding-edge” trunk of some kind of software. But running beta software is clearly not everybody’s business. If you feel uncomfortable with this kind of stuff, just don’t run it! No shame!

This post is made for the folks who like to get their hands dirty and run a backed up system!

To run a beta of Posterino we have to understand one thing: Technically the copy of Posterino purchased through the Mac App Store and the beta (or regular version) downloaded from our site follow two different licensing models.

This boils down to one simple fact: The copy downloaded from our site will stay in demo mode!

However, this does not pose a problem at all, you just have to make sure to use the copy of Posterino purchased through the Mac App Store to export your document without the demo watermark. It’s that simple.

Our Beta Notification Service

If you’d like to get a short notification e-mail every time we release a new beta of Posterino into the wild, just subscribe to our Notification Service. At our current rhythm, new betas are released two times a month. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time and we don’t share your data with anyone outside Zykloid Software.

We are happy to announce the release of Posterino 2.3 featuring the following improvements and bug fixes:

Added alignment guides to help positioning objects on your document. You can inverse the current ‘snap to guides’ mode by holding down the Option key.

You can now rotate all selected objects by using the rotation handle of any selected object.

Added Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Japanese language support.

Added several new articles to the online help regarding the basic Posterino workflow and template handling.

Fixed several problems regarding the appearance of templates and paper sizes in the Template Chooser.

Solved the case where layout popup windows (HUD) are cut off at the edge of the screen and ensured that the popup controls in the Layout mode (blueprint view) stay on the page when the window gets smaller.

Various other bug fixes and small improvements.

This build is a free update recommended for all users!

Depending on where you did make your purchase, open Mac App Store to update:

In January 2011 the Mac App Store opened as an online store and, since late February, Posterino has been available for purchase on the Mac App Store. Because the opening of the Mac App Store has changed the software distribution model we’ve all known for quite some time, we’ve had to learn some new tricks to operate this new beast and cope with some of its pitfalls.

Today I’d like to show you how easy it is to install or re-install software on your Mac using the Mac App Store.

Say, …
… you removed your copy of Posterino from your Mac
… you have a new Mac and want to install the software already purchased on Mac App Store
… you replaced your copy of Posterino in the Applications folder with a (beta) download from our site
… you want to install Posterino on a different Mac

The following steps are true for every application you purchased on the Mac App Store. Not just Posterino.

Prerequisites: If you have a beta or demo version of Posterino in your Applications folder which you would like to replace with the copy you purchased through the Mac App Store, go to your Applications folder and drag Posterino to the trash. Also make sure there is no other copy of Posterino flying around on your system. Use Spotlight to search for “Posterino”.

Open the Mac App Store.

Go the “Purchases” tab by clicking the “Purchases” toolbar button or choose “Purchases” from the “Store” menu.

If necessary, sign in using your App Store / iTunes credentials.

The Mac App Store application will show a list of applications you already purchased.

Click the “Install” button for any application you would like to install.

(If the button reads “Installed”, you did not remove all copies of Posterino from your system. Go back to step 0.)

That’s it. You are done.

Once you realize that you can easily remove applications from your Applications folder without the fear of losing something, it becomes apparent that the Mac App Store will make your Mac maintenance much much simpler.